A pre-school teacher-turned-financial consultant, Georgina Tan found her calling well into her job as a teacher.
Her experience at different pre-schools exposed Georgina to students who came from low-income families. Over the course of time, she saw some extreme cases where students had not enough to eat and were looking a little malnourished, and paying for enrichment classes was certainly out of the question.
It was through “Meet the Parents Sessions” that she could understand more from parents coming from the low-income segment and realised that they required financial help and advice. Despite their circumstances, she found that parents desire the best for their children and she even had a parent who asked her if she knew of any financial adviser who could help them plan for their children.
Humble upbringing formed her core foundation
Georgina shared that her parents come from a generation where children often had to leave school to work in order to support their family. Her dad being the eldest son, meant that he had to quit school to help his parents run the family-owned shop to bring in extra money and cut down school expenses.
Growing up, Georgina saw how much her parents sacrificed their own happiness just to ensure she and her siblings had food and a good education.
She said, “Their WHY was for the family - to ensure we were all well taken care of.”
Drawing inspiration from her parents, and her encounters as a teacher with families that are not from privileged backgrounds, her life’s calling just clicked.
She realised being a pre-school teacher was a stepping stone to the bigger picture of her becoming a financial consultant to help families plan for a secure and brighter future.
“I joined Prudential because I want to protect families and help my clients protect theirs,” she said, choosing to pay forward her parents’ hard work and everything they sacrificed so other families may also improve their socioeconomic background.
Georgina’s WHY is so inspiring and driven by family values that even the Social Media team from Prudential Singapore picked up her story and featured it under their #WeDoLifeToo campaign.
Preventing a sandwich generation
Within two months of joining Assets Prestige Alliance, under Jaslyn Ng Group where she worked closely with mentor and Agency Leader Jaslyn Ng, Georgina’s portfolio of clients ranged from family, friends, parents from the pre-school she taught at, to CEOs and even a local Member of Parliament (MP).
She attributes the wide spectrum of clients to her mentor and Agency Leader, Jaslyn. Jaslyn reaffirmed her belief that regardless of a person’s socioeconomic status, “we’re all still human, and everybody needs an assurance”.
Georgina said: “When life goes wrong, I don’t want families to be caught in difficult situations where they have to give up happiness at the expense of health or saving the money for daily expenses. This is so they do not arrive at a scenario where they have to downgrade their current lifestyle.”
She added, “We are the sandwich generation. We have to provide for our parents, yet at the same time find ways to provide for our own families.” Noting that this is a societal trend that will dramatically impact people’s finances if not planned for, she wants to “prevent the sandwich generation from happening” by helping as many people as possible to prepare and mitigate the financial issues and challenges that lie ahead.
Georgina finds it satisfying to see every family that she has served come away with peace of mind. She takes the effort to analyse and comprehensively plan for her clients and their families with the aim of maintaining the same lifestyle regardless of any misfortune that may happen.
She joined the industry in July 2019, and by the end of 2019, she had protected 30 families with a sum of over S$5 million. And even during COVID-19 times, she managed to protect her former pre-school by insuring the entire school with company benefits. To date, she’s happy to have protected 40 families, insuring them for a total of $10 million despite challenging times this year.
Whether you are a fresh graduate or well in your career journey, it is not too late to find your calling.
Assets Prestige Alliance (APA) is a group of agency units of Prudential Assurance Company Singapore.
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